Aspects of the present specification relate generally to control and verification systems and methods, and more particularly to systems and methods for control and verification of luggage.
Applicant(s) hereby incorporate herein by reference any and all patents and published patent applications cited or referred to in this application.
By way of background, the travel and tourism industry handles millions of passengers and their luggage annually all around the world. Due to the transportation companies' need for reducing or adjusting costs to the extent possible and/or to other safety and security concerns, passengers' luggage is often controlled in terms of certain maximum weight and dimension limitations it has to meet.
In the particular case of air transportation and airlines, there is typically a two-fold luggage control within the airport. The checked-in luggage weight is measured or verified by the airline crew during check-in and compared with that airline's weight limits for checked-in luggage. Whereas, the hand/carry-on luggage is controlled at the boarding gate often in a random, permissive, and tolerant manner. Such variance is most often a byproduct of current hand-luggage controls varying across or even within a particular airline or transportation company from mere visual inspection to the insertion of the hand luggage inside a container or frame configured for the maximum allowed luggage dimensions, whereby if the luggage does not fit therein the passenger is not allowed to take the luggage on-board the airplane, but must instead check the hand luggage, potentially causing delays and frustration for both the passenger and the transportation company staff. Alternatively, a passenger may simply “force” his or her luggage into the test container so as to “pass” and board with the luggage, potentially then having issues with the luggage once on board.
Moreover, oftentimes the hand baggage weight is not even verified, since that would imply or likely result in a slowdown in the boarding process, which the airlines would like to avoid. In other transportation sectors, such as train transport, luggage weight and dimensions are often not controlled, even if there are restrictions concerning these two factors. As such, there is typically not even provided a means for measuring the weight of carry-on bags at the boarding gate, allowing passengers to “stuff” such bags prior to boarding and often then exceed what would otherwise be acceptable weight limits. In the aggregate, such weight overages can have a very real and even dramatic effect on the airlines, both in terms of safety and operational cost (i.e., fuel consumption). Accordingly, it has even been proposed within the airline industry that the passengers themselves would be weighed and additional fees charged for exceeding particular weight limits.
Further, once any such data is collected for one or more pieces of luggage or carry-on bags for a particular transportation vehicle being boarded, it would be beneficial to have the ability to aggregate and organize such data for purposes of analyzing, verifying and managing such carry-on luggage, both as part of the boarding process and in connection with further decisions and procedures relating to departure.
The present specification addresses the shortcomings of known approaches to luggage control and verification that have been previously attempted or implemented. The present specification thus discloses a system and method for controlling and verifying passenger luggage, including but not limited to, overcoming the above-mentioned inconveniences regarding control of the weight and dimensions of each piece of luggage, the lack of accurate dimension control resources, the variation in allowed weight and dimensions among transportation companies, the performance of any such control and verification being manual and thus more time-consuming and prone to error, and the absence of any effective way to aggregate and make use of passenger and luggage data in real-time.
Aspects of the present invention fulfill these needs and provide further related advantages as described in the following summary.